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Anyone can go for a bike ride. But it takes a special kind of person to ride a bike up Mount Everest.

Well, you may not be able to actually summit Everest on a bike (eventhis guy couldn’t do that), but you can do it in a virtual way that befits our data-fixated, social media age. You might also be able to cross Canada on a bike, without actually, you know, crossing Canada. Or ride every road in Calgary, and prove it on your iPhone.

There’s a wave of people on bikes using smartphones to bag new peaks on bikes in virtual ways that has lead to some fun, if perhaps masochistically misguided, ambitious rides. The most prominent of these trends is called Everesting, which started last year when some Australian cyclists grew tired of the challenge of riding the equivalent elevation gain of the Vuelta Espana, one of cycling’s three grand tours. As if that wasn’t enough (grand tours are famously tough), they decided to ride the equivalent elevation gain of Mount Everest: a whopping 8,848 metres. For a little perspective, climbing the Alpe d’Huez, one of the classic climbs of the Tour de France, ends at about 1,800 metres.

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With cyclist smartphone apps such as Stravaor Map My Ride, tracking elevation is no problem. The real challenge is managing to climb that many metres in a reasonable distance. Most cyclists accomplish the feat by finding a hill and riding it over and over until they top a cumulative total of about 8,000 metres. Of those original cyclists, some went for grinding it out on gradual hills over a long period of time — one rider took 430 kilometres to climb that far. Others went steep and managed to pack that much climbing into less than 200 kilometres, even if this meant climbing the same ride hundreds of times.

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But they made it to the virtual summit (even if one was taken out after colliding with a kangaroo), and a new cycling trend was born.There’s even a website dedicated to Everesting now.

There are other ways to use your smartphone to set up ridiculous/fun cycling goals. One lovestruck map-minded cyclist in San Francisco used a mapping app to ask his girlfriend to marry him. He rode streets in his city while the app traced his movements, drawing out a heart and the important question.

Others soon followed, drawing all sorts of pictures by using their phones to track their movements.

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Correction: The map below is from a Strava club that rode the streets of St. Louis (more info from this guy). Masoner clarified that he was originally inspired by Bret Lobree, who rode every street in San Francisco. Thanks to everyone who clarified.

If you’ve always wanted to cross Canada on a bike, but don’t have an understanding employerlike the New York Times’ Bruce Weber, you could ride the equivalent distance around your city (or you could walk the distance, like this guy).

There’s really no limit to what you can do with a bike, a smartphone and some ambition. But it ain’t easy. Here are some examples.

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Eversting around Calgary

Canada Olympic Park: To climb one of the city’s most popular bike climbs for those who enjoy punishment, the road up Canada Olympic Park, with an elevation gain of 120 meters, it would take 73 trips up the hill. The hill is about 2 kilometres long, so it would take 146 kilometres of climbing, but you have to go down the hill too, so double that.

The result: 73 trips up and down the hill for 292 kilometres. That’s a busy Saturday.

Highwood Pass: This road, often called the highest paved road in Canada, is beloved by cyclists looking to test their climbing legs. It rises, according to most measures, 536 metres over about 17 kilometres. Yikes.

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The result: 16 trips up and down for 544 kilometres.

Ride a cross-Canada equivalent at home

The Trans-Canada Highway is listed at 8,030 km. If you join a group like this one, you can do it in about nine weeks. But if you can’t take nine weeks off of work, here’s an alternative you can do over your weekends.

There are many ways to bag a big number of kilometres within city limits, such as this all-pathway route of 100 kms.

The result: To ride the equivilent of a cross-country ride, you’d have to do it 80.3 times. Considering the city’s pathway speed limit is 20 kilometres an hour, it would take about 401.5 hours. That’s 25 weekends of riding eight hours a day on both Saturday and Sunday.

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A 100-kilometre pathway ride in Calgary.

Ride every road in Calgary

There are about 15,000 lane kilometres in Calgary, according to the City of Calgary website. While most have a speed limit of 50 km/h, keeping your speed that high on a bike is pretty impossible unless your name is Ryder Hesjedal. So let’s say an average speed of 30 km/h.

The result: 500 hours at 30 km/h, which works out to 62.5 days of riding eight hours a day.

Update: As the ever diligent reader Richard Zach points out below, lane kilometres, a measure of a road in one direction, aren’t the best measure for this epic. Unless you want to travel both directions on every road, you could cover the city in about a month, rather than two.

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